Reise til Norge - Day 4 - Flåm and Voss

I awoke to a sixth form geography lesson, a geology module on a field-trip I never did. We cruised Sognefjord and it was mostly grey overhead but it was still worth seeing. There were waterfalls of course and isolated huts reached only, one presumes, by water. There were, however, habitations higher up reached probably by some sort of road or track and, again close to the shore, some small towns. When we walked on the open deck it did all bring a smile to my face. It rained heavily as we arrived in Flåm but it was perhaps some sort of summer morning ritual as sun appeared soon afterwards and fell across the head of the fjord. Today’s tour was called ‘Norway in a Nutshell’ and that, I think, is what it gave us. Everything was very well organised and there was some bright weather until mid-afternoon when it rained relentlessly. This is not surprising given Norway’s west coast rainfall figures. The scenery is spectacular but can look very tedious in poor weather. Our stop on the Flåm Railway at Kjosfossen was, however, overwhelming and simply made me cry. It is the most magnificent waterfall and the sun shone behind it; breathtaking is not an adequate word. A train journey (we made two; Flåm – Myrdal and Myrdal – Voss) is good for sightseeing but not necessarily ideal for photography. There were few opening windows and plenty of reflections. The late snow suggested that some is year-round. Voss is, apparently, famous for skiing and extreme sports. Being an exponent of neither, I did not know that. It was quiet today but had enough delights for me on a decent length stay. Lunch in Park Hotel was really quite good. Our tour buses were Swedish and it was unclear to me whether they had been brought in to augment limited local resources. We also saw tour buses from Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine. We stopped at another extraordinary waterfall, Tvindefossen. I was shocked to learn how recent the good part of the road network is especially that in tunnel. Much dates from only the 1980s and 90s. It was a tiring day and a fortuitously structured programme allows us to wind down for the rest of the holiday with an independent port day in Olden, a short tour in Bergen and a sea day.